Bogdanovic’s late heroics put Fenerbahce in Final

The second semifinal was spectacular; in the end Fenerbahce Istanbul outlasted Laboral Kutxa Vitoria Gasteiz 88-77 after overtime at the Turkish Airlines Euroleague Final Four at Mercedes-Benz Arena in the German capital. Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 9 points in the extra session to win it. In Sunday’s championship game, Fenerbahce will face CSKA Moscow, which outlasted Lokomotiv in the first semi final. INTERVIEWS: Luigi Datome, Kostas Sloukas, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Zeljko Obradovic.

Six-times Euroleague winners CSKA Moscow and nouveaux riche Fenerbahce Istanbul will meet in a mouth-watering showdown on Sunday after winning semi-final thrillers garnished by a special fan atmosphere on Friday.

Fenerbahce became the first Turkish team to reach the final after an 88-77 overtime victory against Spaniards Laboral Kutxa Vitoria while CSKA overpowered fellow Russians Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar 88-81.

The semis produced basketball of the highest quality with the favourites living up to their billing against the season’s surprise packages who had defied the odds to reach the Final Four.

Roared on by noisy fans who represented an overwhelming majority among the four sets of supporters forming a 14,000 crowd in the Mercedes-Benz Arena, Fenerbahce had to dig deep against plucky Laboral.

Cheered on by their vociferous followers from the Basque country, Laboral wiped out a 13-0 deficit and led 62-55 early in the fourth quarter after versatile Greek centre Ioannis Bourousis scored eight unanswered points.

Fenerbahce, flourishing after several years of heavy investment by their owners, forced overtime thanks to their key players.

“This is the biggest win of my career but I have an even more important game on Sunday when we face an outstanding CSKA,” Bogdanovic told reporters after finishing with 18 points.

AWKWARD OPPOSITION

“We started very well but Laboral were always going to be awkward opposition as they have several brilliant players with an array of individual skills. We were a bit lucky perhaps to force overtime and then our confidence grew.”

Macedonian centre Pero Antic said: “We took our foot of the gas pedal much too early but showed resilience when we needed to.”

An outstanding performance by French guard Nando De Colo, who collected a game-high 30 points, gave CSKA another shot at the trophy after a catalogue of near misses since their last success.

Having lost two finals and four semis since landing the title in 2008, Russia’s strongest club led throughout against subdued opponents.

With Lokomotiv suffering stage fright in their maiden Final Four appearance, CSKA romped into a 9-0 lead that became 35-21 midway through the second quarter.

Lokomotiv fought hard to stay in the match as playmaker Malcolm Delaney led their effort with 26 points but ultimately fell short.

CSKA kept their nerve after Lokomotiv reduced the gap to 84-79 with 30 seconds left as De Colo sank a pair of free throws with time running out.

“My performance was the result of a fitting team effort and the most important thing in the final will be to play as aggressively as we did today,” said De Colo.

Football Match Tickets in Istanbul Turkey

Football, hugely popular in Turkey, was brought there in the second half of the 19th century when English tobacco and cotton traders visited the main harbour towns of the Ottoman Empire.
In the beginning they played football with each other, and later taught the game to their Turkish neighbours.The first football match on Turkish grounds was played in Salonika in 1875. After that, football was played in Istanbul and İzmir. But during this time, football was only played between English and Greek people. This was also the case in the first Turkish league, named the Istanbul Football League.But some young Turkish men, who loved this game at once, began to play football in open fields without observing any rules.
These young players formed the first Turkish team, playing their first match on 26 October, 1901, against a Greek team. Then the club Beşiktas, founded in 1903, became the first Turkish club to enter the Istanbul League.

When the clubs Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray also entered this league, the real period of Turkish football began.

A very strong love for football widened to the whole nation. After this period football in Turkey started to develop very fast and treating football like a “national matter” continued until now.

Turkey has a big potential in footbal. There are 4,956 football clubs organized in Turkey, and a registered 4,775 professional and 136,823 amateur players with 233 women. 796 male and 20 female football referees are licensed by the TFF.

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